The Motley Fool's David Gardner Reflects on Gratitude

In this podcast episode, Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner talks about gratitude.

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This video was recorded on Nov. 23, 2022.

David Gardner: What do you have to be grateful for? I'll pull up a chair and stay awhile. Let's be grateful together this week. Let us reflect on our world. At the end of another year, let us rejoice in the good things that we have. Only on this week's Rule Breaker Investing. 

Welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing a delight to have you join me during what is for me anyway, I bet for you too, one of the busier months of the year. Thank you for sparing some time to suffer, Fools, gladly. Speaking of thanks, well, that's the theme of this week's podcast. Near the end of another year, I want to think together from a position of gratefulness, gratitude, the power of that. I started this annual series a couple of years back after having a talk with my son Gabe. Gabe is a well-read young lad at the age of 26 and one of the books he's had on his shelf was, Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier, it's by Robert Emmons, E-M-M-O-N-S.

This book originally came out, I believe in 2007. I still haven't read it, but my son, Gabe did read it and while I was talking about it with him, he said the thesis of the book is the general research on just how a bit of gratitude every day is one of the few things that can increase our baseline level of happiness. Now maybe you dear listener, have a practice of gratitude. Maybe you say a prayer each morning or have a meditation, gratitude can take many different forms. Maybe you have a systematic, regular process and if you do, well, that's more systematic probably than I have. But as it turns out, as Robert Emmons shows through his studies, there's a lot of positive psychology in this, by the way, for positive psychology fans.

Well, the inside of his book flap says, "Did you know that there is a crucial component of happiness that is often overlooked?" In fact, I'm just going to read from the dust cover and keep going here, "In the pages of this eminently readable book, Robert Emmons, Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Positive Psychology, draws on the first major study of the subject of gratitude of 'wanting, what we have' and shows that a systematic cultivation of this under-examined emotion can measurably change people's lives," it goes on. "Readers will discover how one people who regularly practice grateful thinking can increase their set point for happiness by as much as 25 percent." That's your baseline level of happiness, by the way, you're set point for happiness, increasing it as much as 25 percent.

Many think that's not increasable that you're almost born with it or it's set for you in early days and Emmons is begging to disagree and I'll continue quoting. Two, "Such increases can be sustained over a period of months. Challenging the previously held notion that are set points for happiness or frozen at birth," and three, "Keeping a gratitude journal for as little as three weeks can result in better sleep and more energy." It closes, "Emmons also reaches beyond science to bolster the case for gratitude by weaving in the writings of philosophers, novelists, and theologians like no other book has before." Thanks! That's the title of the book. "Thanks! inspires readers to embrace gratitude and all the benefits it can bring into our lives." Well, before I get started with my six gratitudes, this time around, I want to give a couple of more quotes and I want to thank, speaking of thanking, my son Gabe again for sharing it out.

One quote, this comes from the intro of the book. "It is gratitude that enables us to receive, and it is gratitude that motivates us to repay by returning the goodness that we have been given, in short, it is gratitude that enables us to be fully human." Finally, the great 20th century humanitarian physician, theologian and Nobel Peace Prize winner Albert Schweitzer called gratitude, "The secret to life". In one particular sermon, he's summarized his position by stating that, "The greatest thing is to give thanks for everything. He who has learned this knows what it means to live. He has penetrated the whole mystery of life, giving thanks for everything." Well, everything sounds like maybe too long a podcast this week, but I do have six things queued up to give thanks for.

Before I start with the first one, let's briefly think of the opposite of gratitude. That would be ingratitude. For me, it sounds a lot like complaining, complaining about well, everything. I hope you don't have anybody like this in your life, if I ever did, I don't have now I'm happy to say, but people whose first instinct is to complain. Whenever I have in mind those feverish, selfish little clods of ailments and grievances, I have to go back speaking of quotes to another of my favorite quotes previously covered on a great quotes Rule Breaker Investing podcast, then that would be the George Bernard Shaw quote from Man and Superman on living a great life. Let's do it one more time right now. "This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, the being a force of nature. Instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community. As long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die. For the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake, life is no brief candle, to me, it is a splendid torch, which I've got to hold up for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations". Well, thank you George Bernard Shaw for that beautiful contrast between feverish clods of ailments and grievances complaining the world won't devote itself to making us happy and the exact opposite and that is gratefulness in Schweitzer's words, for everything. Gratitude number 1. Well for my first gratitude, darn it. I do this every year. Gratitude number 1, I want to thank you. Yes, you.

Whoever you are, wherever you are, many places you are all different but I'm speaking to you right now. You a rule-breaker, brother or sister in arms, fellow Fools, all. A community to which I can say with Bernard Shaw, my life belongs. Thank you for being there. Not just of course, to my Rule Breaker Investing podcast listeners, although most of all to you, but I want to thank all Motley Fool members and prospective Motley Fool members everywhere. Especially I think, of people who are not yet members today, but who are awakened to the beauties of questioning conventional wisdom, especially around money, which is at the heart of capital F, foolishness for us. For all Fools, everywhere, for that spirit of challenge, for doing it in a fun way, which has to be the case. If you're a Motley Fool, it's one thing to be a Fool challenging conventional wisdom.

But if you're a Motley Fool, you're bringing some humor to it, just like Shakespeare's jesters. To every Foolish spirit, everywhere I say, thank you because arguably as much as I apparently enjoy often talking to myself from one week to the next on this podcast occasion with friends or special guests, I wouldn't do it just to talk to myself. I suppose I should especially thank you. If you're somebody who's shared your story, if you shared your question, if you've written into our mailbag, any of the mailbags this year or any other year, thank you. This podcast is powered a quarter of the time by you about one week in every four is our mailbag and it's your awesome stories, poems, and questions which power this podcast so and a special thanks to you. A quick reminder, our mailbag for this month is next week.

Our email address is [email protected]. We will be recording that early because it's the holiday time of year so get your questions in right now. Well, if you're listening to podcasts, go ahead and finish if you like but if you are moved by anything you hear this week, if you have a question about something we did last week or earlier this month, if you have a story to tell here near the end of 2022, I would love to feature it on next week's mailbag [email protected]. You can of course tweet us. Hope you're still using Twitter. Tweet us at @RBIPodcast. Gratitude number 2, this one this year is to the game designers. If you've grown up in more than, let's say the last 25 years. If you're 30 or older, you have been raised in an environment for games that was very different from the generations before. In this regard, I first started noticing that games were getting awesome when books, publishers began to put the names of the designers on the front cover here, not of the book, but of the game box.

If you're like me, you know that a lot of the games that you used to buy before they showed up online where stores like Toys R Us or there might be a hobby comics doors somewhere nearby but many of those games from Monopoly to Yahtzee, Pachisi, the list goes on a lot of them parlor games I still really don't know who designed those games. The names of the designers were not celebrated, they were not on the cover, but for the last few decades, they are very much on the covers. When you buy the game Wingspan from Stonemaier Games, you see Elizabeth Hargrave's name there. If you buy a great release from 2022 like Ark Nova, you see first-time designer Mathias Wigge, I hope I pronounced his German name right, Mathias, Wigge's name right there on the front cover of the box and when Frost Haven finally ships the most kick-started game of all time from brilliant game designer Isaac Childres that's happening somewhere around this time right now.

Yeah. Isaac's name is right there on the cover and so for years generations toiling in obscurity the game designers were unknown. They were anonymous, even if we enjoyed their creations on our tabletop with family members on a regular or some time basis. Yet they were always the designers, they were always designing and many of the great game designers like Reiner Knizia who's been with me on this podcast before, Rob Daviau, many other great game designers, Richard Garfield, all of whom I've featured on Rule Breaker Investing over the years, they're not just one-hit wonders. Some are probably like some bands too, but most of them are repeatedly bringing out their next game, year after year, like successful great novelists. Gratitude number 2 is to the game designers because as much as I love reading, I love playing games even more and I think I've probably spent more hours playing games than reading nonfiction. I've done a lot of both. Maybe you have too dear listener.

But over the course of my life, I want to thank the game designers. Now I want to broaden this a little bit past the geeky world of tabletop games and go to the game designers that I can think of. I can think of my friend and Motley Fool Co-Founder Todd Etter, who for years has created games internally for our employees, many of our annual employee off-sites where we all come together, we call it Foolapalooza every year it just happened once again this year. It was more face-to-face than it had been in recent years. Many of those Todd has created a dedicated and special game, a unique one-off for all of our hundreds of fellow Fools for us to enjoy together, whether it was an escape the room experience or more like a puzzle hunt. Todd's done all of those and created many other games and yet his name isn't on the front of any of these because none of these is boxed but I want you to know the game designers are all around us and I've done my best to surround myself with as many great game designers.

Todd Etter is one of them, a dear friend over the years. Maybe you have game designers in your life and broadening it just a little bit more. I love gamification. That is a major trend today. It's happening in evident places, especially within learning. But gamification, whether it's the Hydrate Spark pro water bottle I was featuring in recent weeks which gamifies the drinking of water from one day to the next and makes it a communal competition in celebration right through to Duolingo, the language teaching app in the streaks that you can rack up, whether it's Wordle, Duolingo or whatever your favorite app is of choice. Increasingly I find is gamifying the world around us and for me anyway, that makes it a lot more engaging and a lot more fun. You bet. I could've said this any other year, but I said it this year.

Thank you, designers of games. Onto gratitude number 3. In recent years, on my gratitude podcasts, I've focused on that great Jefferson line about how lighting your candle, let's say it's what you know your candle is lit and you light someone else's candle with your taper, as I believe Jefferson was terming candles in the famous line, your own taper, your own candle is not diminished as you light someone else's, as you share a good idea or thought with someone else, yours is not diminished and the light grows. That is indeed a human dynamic that explains a lot of our human progress over the centuries that we are a social creature and we share with each other often in the abstract through conversation, good things, and we all win as a consequence. Now, that is worthy of support and celebration, and gratitude every year.

But in particular this year, I just want to focus on my favorite new app this fall. The reason I'm launching into this is because the way I found out about this app was through this podcast specifically earlier this month we kicked off November on Rule Breaker Investing with Mental Tips, Tricks, and Life Hacks Volume 7, always fun to do about once a year that series. I spoke to my love of e-books and specifically of highlighting. The elaborate amounts of highlighting that I've done in the four colors with their own individual meanings. If this sounds interesting to you and you didn't get a chance to hear this, feel free to listen to the November 2nd episode this month. But I spoke to my love of highlighting and a couple of different fellow Fools came back to me and each said in so many words, "Hey, do you know about read wise? You just talked about your love of highlighting and books and you said part of the reason you don't read more," they said back to me is,

"Your memory is in great and so you're wondering, should you spend so much time reading if you're not remembering a lot of what you're reading," my friends Rex and Cara, who both happen to be listeners of this podcast, and Motley Fool employees. Both Rex and Cara said, "Have you tried Readwise now, for many of you, you're already nodding your head. You might use Readwise, which is a content aggregator. Whether you want to point Readwise at your Kindle app and you're reading and highlights of your Kindle app, or maybe you do Apple books. You can also do this with Twitter threads. There's a tool that you can plug in that pulls from podcasts almost any content that you'd like to save or highlight Readwise can work with, but at least for me in my early first few weeks of keeping my daily streak going, enjoying Readwise. I'm just focused mainly on the Kindle app, which I've made elaborate use of.

The first thing that Rex and Cara suggested I do, I've done. I uploaded all of my Kindle library into Readwise, where I learned I've read 98 bucks on my Kindle and I have thousands and thousands of highlights. Ostensibly what Readwise does is using machine learning. I'm sure things I couldn't fully understand, it just powers back to me five highlights from my library of all highlights across all my books. Five highlights each morning in a daily, happy email. I get emailed every morning for free by Readwise, five highlights from all the books that I've read over the last 10 plus years on my Kindle, and specifically the passages lines, or moments that I wanted to highlight and remember. Truly each morning as I open up my Readwise daily email, it brings a smile. I can go back and tag or favorite things I can discard if Readwise has sent me a particular highlight that I think is irrelevant at this point, you really are starting to craft your own knowledge library with some of your own tagging, your own resource as a reader, if you are a very active highlighter or saver of content that you come across.

Again, for me, it takes the form of the Kindle app, but for you, it might work with a different app or in different ways in your life. But I'm here to give gratitude specifically for Readwise and more broadly for friends like Rex and Cara who point us to good things in our lives. The people who share with you the tools. Cara, who also appeared on this podcast earlier this month with our Company Culture Tips Volume 10, our greatest hits, Cara's Motley, her value that she brings every day to The Motley Fool, she describes as there's an app for that. The people who share with you the tools that people who know the apps, if you read this great book, a friend might ask or someone else, been to this great restaurant or seen this new play. Let's give gratitude to the people who turn us on, who light our candles because they have wisdom, foresight, maybe knowledge of us or just an appreciation of the good and they share it out.

Thank you, Rex. Thank you, Cara, thank you, Readwise. Gratitude number 3. Now gratitude number for let's just call this one the torch bearers. If you're somewhere in your 60s or older, i think you already get this, but for me anyway, well, here now at the age of 56, this is a new one. I think we need to get high enough up the mountain, reach a certain age before we can finally not just feel, but articulate this sentiment, even if it is itself a bit predictable, maybe even threadbare. Forgive me if this sounds cliche, but yeah, the torch bearers or put another way, the young people. I'm not just talking here about the beauty of youth or of innocence. Though those are precious, ephemeral things that we should do our best to preserve, as they are often under threat and on a clock. Youthful beauty, youthful innocence.

The things we can all appreciate probably at any age, but at a particular age that might be somewhere around my age, you begin to see a third thing in young people, writ large, especially the ones you love, you start to see the torch bearers emerge. If with Bernard Shaw, life is no brief candle. To me, if it is a splendid torch, which I've got to hold up for the moment and I want to make it burns brightly as possible. Well, what we then go on to is that we want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations. Those are the torchbearers. In my own life, both personally and professionally I've begun to spy them out, to see them for what they are, for what they will be. It gives me great comfort and satisfaction. Tomorrow with Scarlet O'Hara will be another day. One of those Tomorrow's will finally not include you and me living and breathing anymore, but what we live for and why we breathe, that can and will persist. It's through our torchbearers.

They may come from all walks of life.They may look like you because, well, they're your kids or grandkids or they may not look like you at all, but they are your torch bearer because they carry for the things you value, they are committed, they're with you. You may have fancy them behind you. In years maybe they are, but they're actually coming alongside you and they, the young people provide you hope and such promise this new-generations the smartest ever born with by far more worldly experiences and more complex challenges than any generation that has ever walked this earth. To think that you have and are finding more people who you dear listener are connecting with, who are readying themselves over months or years or decades to carry your torch. That's a delightful thought. If you want to see what a torch bearer looks like to me, well, relisten to any number of Rule Breaker Investing podcasts this year or any other. Listen to the analysts joining me for Reviewapaloozas or market cap games hows.

Listen to mailbags. Fellow Fools, capital F, writing in who totally get it, who share their stories or relisten to or here for the first time if you missed it. My conversation with tenants professionals Sem Verbeek last month, October 12. Barbara Fredrickson of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who may be the world's leading expert on happiness and positive psychology, puts hope among her top 10 most common positive emotions. Hope, one of my best friends Wikipedia describes hope this way. Hope is an optimistic state of mind that is based on an expectation of positive outcomes with respect to events and circumstances in one's life or the world at large. As a verb, hope's definitions include expect with confidence, and to cherish a desire with anticipation. Well, these are really lovely definitions and exactly why young people to whom my gratitude number 4 pays tribute this year. Give me, give us hope. The torch bearers.

Well onto gratitude number 5, this one I first had to articulate at a high school reunion. My class was gathering back in Southborough, Massachusetts where I graduated from St. Mark's School in 1984. It was our 10th reunion in 1994, which on a total side note for perspective sake was also the year The Motley Fool launched on AOL. The joy of our regathering as high school grads 10 years later was bittersweet. In that early on that weekend's Saturday morning, we gathered at the chapel for a brief service and mourning of one of our classmates, one of our brightest classmates who enrolled after high school in the Naval academy, and had died during a training flight in the Atlantic Ocean, North of Puerto Rico, having launched from but not ever returning to the aircraft carrier, USS John F. Kennedy. I've been asked to say a few things at that chapel service, and I felt the weight of that without really knowing as a young man what to say.

These days when needing to learn something, I'd probably start by Googling. But in 1994, well, [Alphabet's] Google's still wouldn't exist for four more years so I don't know how I started searching about for what to say, maybe Yahoo. But I lighted upon this. Part of what we lose when we lose someone, part of what hits us hardest is that we actually have just lost part of ourselves. The part of ourselves that blooms, blossoms shows itself in only a certain way, in the presence of that friend or dear family member. By default, that part, when they go away, has to go away. The part of me that is only with you is now gone. The part of me that is only with you is no more. I felt this two weekends ago at another memorial service this fall, this time for a family friend, felt it for all of us there that day each of us, because each of the people there to pay tributes was a certain version of themselves only in the presence of that man in the same way that you show different sides of yourself to your mother or father, different than you showed your best friend from high school, or your cousin or your favorite college prof, favorite because she saw something special in you.

That version of you, that unique version of you with its own history of stories differentiated from all other sets of stories. That version of you melts away when someone you love is gone. Gerard Manley Hopkins in his beautiful poem, Spring and Fall to a young child begins by asking his addressee presumably a young child named Margaret. Margaret, are you grieving over golden grove on leaving? It's fall and the beautiful golden grove is dropping all its leaves, and perhaps this sensitive child cries at the site. But as the poem bends to its brief end the poet asserts, it is the blight man was born for, it is Margaret you mourn for. That puts me in mind that this same thought about loss, part of the loss, part of the mourning, and part of the healing, very important parts too are the recognition and acceptance that we have now lost something of ourselves that we will never regain. It is the blight man was born for. It is you yourself that you mourn for.

During the season of fall where the leaves are dropping and we reflect back upon the year as it's been, including our losses, which had been many. I'm here to underline something to be thankful for. Here too to be self-aware about this because though I've recounted few stories of loss and reflection on what loss really includes the part of me that is only with you is no more. I want to be the first to celebrate and underscore the part of me that is only with you is very much alive and worthy of gratitude for all those we are connected with today here. Now that joke from your school days that can only truly be appreciated by that friend who was with you in those days. That spouse or partner or therapist who knows only this or that thing about you. That person that you can or choose only to share with. That child who makes a hero of you, even if you don't feel heroic yourself. That way that you show up that is only in that context.

Those contexts, those connections, those relationships, which one day may cease when one of you does, those things are precious. An awareness of that, perhaps especially over the Thanksgiving table this week here in the USA that acknowledgment and appreciation of those with whom you are connected. That part of me that is only with you needs to be felt, seen, acknowledged if you like, thanked, appreciated for however long and however rich you can make it. That part of me that is only with you is gratitude number 5. Onto number 6, the final gratitude for Gratitude 2022. Is this surprising? Maybe it is. I want to thank the market. I want to thank the market and why we invest. I want to start by saying we can even invest is worthy of our gratitude. For many of us hearing me, right now, you were born into a society that you probably I, included are in danger of taking sometimes too much for granted.

It's hard to appreciate all of the things that have privileged us, that we have inherited in some cases or just naturally been surrounded by or fallen into, through serendipity, however, we got to where we are right now that we can even invest for those hearing me right now, where you could save a dollar. You could actually through the stock market, put that into part ownership of a company whose products and services and work in this world you admire, that you can take pride in that you can actually become a part owner of that company through the small miracle of the stock market that we so often, too often take for granted. That's pretty great. What's even better because it gets even better if you've invested it well and you give time to happen, it grows in value over time, good news for you, with you doing very little.

I have done very little to power the stocks that have powered my life and the lives of many who followed The Motley Fool and continued to going forward. I hope for the next three decades, we're still just getting started at Fool HQ, but I've done very little to help Amazon or Netflix. They have done so very much to power for me and for many financial freedom, that the market is even there. That we're in a society that has that, that protects it, that enables it to flourish and to be run properly. There's a lot of human fallibility in and around business in the markets. We all can recognize that as well, but that we even have a market that we can invest in and find financial freedom through that is worthy of great gratitude. But then I think also of this past year when who really wants to thank a market that is lost somewhere between a fifth and a third of its value for many of us, depending on what stocks you're invested in and how deeply you're invested.

Why would we thank a market that has made us poorer throughout 2022? I'm put in mind of past guests, Shirzad Chamine and his encouragement to you and to me through his vehicle of positive intelligence, the stories that we tell ourselves and how we choose to live our lives based often on what we allow into our brain and how long we went to hold our hand over and open flame or retract it, and move on to a more comfortable place. Shirzad said, even in our worst experiences, he would say, these are gifts and opportunities. Part of the gift of bear markets, part of the gift of a stock market that on average over the last 100 years has lost value about one year in three. One out of every three years, if you're an investor for life like me, you are going to lose. Part of the gift of that seeing through Shirzad's lenses for me is to make us appreciate the good times.

There's something really amazing about a dynamic where you lose one out of three times, because the other two times which occurred twice as often as the one bad time, the other two times, which includes the bad time roll up to a remarkable compounding vehicle. Whether we're talking about over three years, or three decades, or your whole lifetime, losing to win is one of my favorite most repeated themes on this podcast. Losing helps you and me appreciate winning, and hard times make the good times even sweeter. The truth is, if we never lost, if we didn't ever face hard times, we would not be able to sever that many good times both behind us and yet ahead of us. It is a true gift to experience loss because it makes us truly appreciate the good times. Another gift of market sell-offs of watching the tide go out. Yeah. Is that you see as the wag says, you see who wasn't wearing pants.

You know if the market was always going up, if speculation was always rewarded then all kinds of half-baked, crazy, ridiculous business models, questionable characters, all of these would be constantly rewarded. It would be hard to separate the silver from the draws. Indeed, it takes market sell-offs to expose chicanery, to expose fraud, to exposed in some cases, parts and good places, but with bad business models we've seen that recently this year with any number of things that have imploded and often for good reasons, we can look back to the pump and dump scheme of the past, to the Ponzi schemes, to the difficulties of 2008-2009. To 2001, if you want to keep going back, you can. Many markets sell-offs over the course of time have provided natural consequences that need to have happened for us to get back on track with good things that really matter. It is a gift, is it not Shirzad Chamine? These markets sell-offs they send the tide out and they expose the silly.

That is important. Finally, I think that there is an opportunity, there is an opportunity in market sell-offs to learn, haven't we done this year to learn about ourselves? When Emily Flippen came on the podcast earlier this month and said, you know I'm grateful for this time because I still have so many years ahead to invest and to prosper, but I have just lived through a real market sell-off for the first time, I believe Emily said, in my adult life and that's a real opportunity to learn about the markets and about ourselves. It's a great line. I think this is ascribed to Nelson Mandela, "I Either win or I learn." Market sell-offs aren't about winning, so I think I know what they're about, and so it has been a gift and an opportunity and always will be when every three years or so the market one-year sells off, or every decade or so, we have a so-called financial crisis often leading to the market losing a third or more of its value. It has happened before, it is happening now and it will always recur again and again.

That's why it's about just keep swimming persistence and resilience. Not being a weekend you get shaken out by one bad year or one bad era, because you pay such an opportunity cost for not staying invested, for fleeing when the chips are down. You will be so well rewarded for recognizing the gifts and opportunities in these times and overall the power of conscious capitalism and the market. Well, I said at the start of gratitude number 6, it's about the market which I've just spoken to, but also why we invest. That puts me in mind of something I've shared. I haven't done this in a few years now, but it felt right to do it this time of this year. About why we invest. Because that's another thing I'm extremely grateful for. Not just the market itself, but why we invest. I'm going to share back with you in closing a brief essay, which I've turned into an audio essay that sometimes recurs on this podcast, as well as a poem that was inspired by it to close this week.

This an essay I first wrote in Motley Fool Stock Advisor when I wrote the intros, this one was back in 2010. I think we were even still a newsletter perhaps. It was still maybe a print version of Stock Advisor back in 2010. I'm certainly a fan of not having print versions anymore, so I vote for that, but that's how old this is probably. Shortly after it occurred on our discussion boards at fool.com, one of our members who went under the screen name Captain Haiku, which I later understood to be too young women who are sisters composed a brief poem in response. I'm going to share both my audio essay and their poem to close, and here we go. Gratitude number 6, closing it out with why we invest. My favorite episode of my favorite mini-series, Band of Brothers is entitled Why We Fight. Without wishing to spoil the story for those who haven't yet seen it, I won't give away the answer to the question, but the episode is a beautiful, sad, and gripping piece of Hollywood poetry, and the phrase "why we fight" has since stuck with me and it's morphed into my own phrase, why we invest.

Let's peel every layer of the onion away at the start, at the root of the fruit is this simple reality. We work hard in this world to build up savings, that savings we call capital. Our capital represents the sum total of our lives efforts expressed monetarily above and beyond what we've spent. When we invest, we're doing something very wonderful and very difficult, were forfeiting the enjoyment of the use of this capital in the near term. All our instincts and temptations, many of our peers, perhaps even a spouse, urge us sometimes directly or subtly by association against this. Spend it now reads or sings or shouts any one of thousands of messages confronting the typical adult every day. But investors, take at least some of their capital and do the exact opposite. We forego the instant gratification. That on its own is admirable, but we go one further. We investors, we crazy investors forfeit the enjoyable immediate use of our capital for no certain reward.

As stock market investors, in particular, we invest willingly knowing that our unspent and on enjoyed capital may actually at least partly disappear. If there's a better reason for calling ourselves Fools, I don't know that the world will ever find it. In particular, practicing my own unique style of investing is a more aggressive rule-breaking investors seeking to maximize my returns. I flat out and know that I will lose money on many occasions. Throwing the academic studies that say investing in individual stocks isn't worthwhile because you can't reliably beat the indices. Now you can see why do it yourself investing is a niche. It's a niche we've been helping to grow, but it's a niche. Here's why we invest.

For our children and grandchildren. Because our parents and grandparents did and made our lives so much better. Because every dollar we invest helps support the companies and businesses we admire and buy from. Because we love and celebrate ownership, and believe this world will be far stronger for more owners, not more renters. Because the academics are wrong. Because with Arthur O'Shaughnessy and his ode, we are the music makers and we're the dreamers of dreams, and investing is our instrument and making dreams come true is even more than Disney. I think a very real Motley Fool end, and 100 other reasons besides these are all in part or in whole why we invest. Keep at it dear Fool. Now to close out here came Captain Haiku's response.

A series of strung together Haikus. Sorry, can't truncate each word has import and heart. Not selfish, we built. Many years gone by hard work, hard times, good times to Haiku, self-referential needs little. Why do we invest? So that our hard work endures beyond our short years. So that our children start their journeys on a hill and see the mountain, we build battlement that endure, shelter others from the worst of storms. We launched sturdy ships, we will not see the far shore, but have no regrets. We are a small part of all we set in motion and thus we invest.